Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)

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The technical section of the village pump is used to discuss technical issues about Wikipedia. Bugs and feature requests should be made at the BugZilla because there is no guarantee developers will read this page. Problems with user scripts should not be reported here, but rather to their developers (unless the bug needs immediate attention).

Newcomers to the technical village pump are encouraged to read these guidelines prior to posting here. Questions about MediaWiki in general should be posted at the MediaWiki support desk.

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Seeing the page behind a Special page?

Is there a .js gadget out there somewhere which adds a tab to Special: pages (called "page" or something) which links to the Mediawiki: page which the Special: page is based on (for the purposes of discussing / editing it, say)? Thanks in advance. It Is Me Here (talk) 09:19, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

Unfortunately, it's not that simple. The first example I looked at, Special:Statistics, incorporates at least 15 Mediawiki: pages. Algebraist 13:06, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

Could the related MediaWiki: pages be listed at the bottom, then? Dendodge Talk^Contribs 13:07, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

My usual technique is to load Special:Allmessages (warning: large page) and search that for the content of the message I'm looking for. Is that helpful? {{Nihiltres|talk|log}} 18:52, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

If you have a specific page in mind, it might be faster/easier to look at the source code [1]. — CharlotteWebb 19:06, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

OK, thanks for the replies, people. It Is Me Here (talk) 19:55, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

Captchas and the blind

Fellow Wikipedians;

It has come to my attention that the captchas we have for account registration are not utilizable by the blind. While we have a account creation group, this is a major inconvenience for blind potential users and many might just give up and leave. I am suggesting that we add a audible captcha or work towards adding one. If this is not possible, maybe we could add a note to that effect to the create account page, apologizing for the inconvenience and asking blind users to email the Account Creation Group. Geoff Plourde (talk) 03:51, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Such a note already exists: 'Unable to see the image? An administrator can create an account for you.' Algebraist 04:11, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

I don't believe that administrators should have to create accounts for blind people. It would appear to be unfair to an otherwise good contributor to force him/her to wait for assistance. Also, this would be a PR shiny. Geoff Plourde (talk) 01:32, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

An audible CAPTCHA may indeed be nice, if we could generate the requisite audio clips. — Werdna • talk 06:38, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

I've always wondered - don't audible CAPCHAs defeat the whole point? I know that they do something with background noise... but surely it is much easier for a bot to get through than a standard one? As a programmer, I am utterly stumped as to how a well coded bot could not get through an audible CAPTCHA. I don't really see what is wrong with ACC, as an account creator we get most accounts dealt with within about an hour or so of them being requested. — neuro^(talk) 11:19, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

"The whole point" is simply to reduce the number of non-human accounts created. Most spambots do not have the facilities required to successfully complete an audio captcha (not least because it is less effort to simply do a better job at visual ones), thus serving the captcha's purpose just fine. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 12:25, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

By the way, audible CAPTCHAs are quite hard to hack. Its not just background noise, they 'warp' the sound, add pauses, and do lots of other things. Try using the audible CAPTCHA when you create an account on Gmail and you'll see what I mean. ManishEarth^{Talk - Stalk} 13:09, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

I must have been on a site with an outdated build, then, because I distinctly remember it simply being audio files combined to read a number. Hm. — neuro^(talk) 14:25, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Not really. Just as with image captchas, it depends on the quality of the implementation. As recently as May 2008 gmail's audio captcha was extremely weak. Anomie⚔ 17:34, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

If an audio captcha system already exist that could be implemented in WP then it would be a small effort to include that as an alternative to visual captchas. Agree that audio captchas would be at least as hard to crack as the visual ones, but it would depend on the implementation of course. If it turns out to be too weak, it would be even easier to disable it until fixed. I can't see any downside to it?
—Apis (talk) 02:45, 21 November 2008 (UTC

Maybe this is interesting for the discussion as well: http://blind.wikia.com/wiki/Mediawiki_and_Accessibility#CAPTCHA -- Lalue (talk) 08:23, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

So the extension is already available, all we need to do is have it implemented. Geoff Plourde (talk) 18:51, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Random Article Improvements

I'm just curious if someone has ever thought of changing the distribution used by the Random Article link. I love using this to serendipitously find interesting articles, but a disproportionate number of articles are about geographic locations, etc. It would be neat if there was some type of Random Article link that picked based on a weighted distribution, like how often the page is viewed, how long it is, or how often it has been edited. That would probably make it more likely to get interesting articles (although interesting is subjective). Thanks bdodson (talk) 05:11, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

I think there's more geographic articles than any other kind, hence why they come back more often. There was a bot discussion sometime back about creating (literally) millions of these geographical articles. Lugnuts (talk) 09:38, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

I think bdodson is aware of why geographical articles come up more often than most, but that doesn't answer the question. Maybe first randomly selecting a top-level category and only then randomly picking an article within would work? Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 12:27, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

It might be a good idea to check whether Random Article really does return a disproportionate number of articles are about geographic locations. I just tried Random Article 6 times running, and got zero geography articles. OTOH some readers may prefer a random selection within specified categories. If so, an extension of Chris Cunningham (not at work)'s proposal might be good: a "totally random" option and a "pick a category" option.

Do we have any poll mechanism for researching users' thoughts on issues like this and other possible improvements to WP as a whole?--Philcha (talk) 12:41, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

As of a year and a half ago, about 10% of Wikipedia's articles were about geographic locations. It's not too unlikely that you'll hit "random article" ten times and get ten locations. Far more likely is that you'll hit it ten times and get ten biographies, since those made up 30% of Wikipedia's content. --Carnildo (talk) 21:15, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

I recently wrote a script that takes you to a random link on any page. It's useful for sampling random Featured or Good Articles, or for randomly diffusing through Wikipedia. Comments and suggestions are welcome, Proteins (talk) 03:44, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

It sounds like you don't want a random article button, but an interesting article button. That's a whole different kettle of fish, and there are several possible avenues to explore in deciding how to create such a feature... but alas, we don't have one currently. :( --brion (talk) 16:24, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

I just hit Special:Random six times, and got Singyahi Maidan, Kotorydz, Kachin Theological College, Aphelenchoides fragariae, Castle Roogna, and United States men's national water polo team (in that order). Given the proportionate number of geography articles we have, I think that's an appropriate spread. EVula // talk // ☯ // 18:25, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

knowledge sharing

Dear friends,

   We are conducting a study on the motivation of the knowledge sharing on Wikipedia. 

Your experience of the read from and write to Wikipedia is very important to the design and management of this knowledge platform. The survey will take about three minutes. We deeply appreciate your help on answering the following questions.

   After the survey is done, we will randomly select twenty persons and present them with USB 2GB Flash Drives. 

Besides, with each valid questionnaire, we will donate US $1 dollar to the Wikimedia Foundation. The result of this survey is analyzed in an anonymous way and is only regarded as the academic use. Please feel free to fill out the questionnaire. Thanks again for your time and valuable input.

May happiness and health be with you everyday!

★ On-line Questionnaire: http://140.119.19.152:8080/wiki/

　

Shari S. C. Shang

Eldon Y. Li

Professor,

Department of Management Information Systems,

National Chengchi University

—Preceding unsigned comment added by 吳雅玲 (talk • contribs) 13:26, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Answered, this isn't the appropriate section though. — neuro^(talk) 14:29, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Boo! --NE2 16:17, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

Special:Statistics

The page seems a bit redundantly long. Can some of the stats maybe be tabled side by side (kind of like Special:SpecialPages)?

Also, aren't many stats using {{NUMBERINGROUP}} useless? Like, who cares about experimental user group uploader and about the 1 user it contains? And worse than that... why the ones that are just 0? This is supposed to be stats for the public... now it *may* be interested in the number of admins or such, maybe not so much about the crats, but certainly not the obsolete empty groups. -- Mentisock 17:26, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

This page is dynamically created by the software, as such it has no idea which statistics people "care about" or even what each statistic means. They are just numbers from log tables that it is instructed to put onto the page in a sensible order. Remember that MediaWiki, the software which runs wikipedia, is also used to run thousands of websites that have a huge range of purposes; on some of those sites, the number of users in each category might be vitally important. It's not a simple as saying that because en.wiki doesn't care about a particular statistic, it should be removed. Happy‑melon 18:55, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

In what possible cases could stats be vital? O_o -- Mentisock 10:19, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

Imagine a site which takes a paper role-playing game online; the transparency and accountability of a wiki is ideally suited to keeping track of movements and activities in such a game. Pages in namespaces could represent events or objects in the game; users in various groups could represent players in various factions or with particular skills. On a wiki like this, accurate numbers for the number of users in a group and pages in a namespace are utterly invaluable to the game. This is just one example: MediaWiki is such a powerful and flexible platform for website development that the sky really is the limit for possible applications. Happy‑melon 11:17, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, well, it's still arguably not absolutely 'vitally important'... besides, they can generate them manually on a more suitable page maybe, as well. WP isn't an RPG though... or is it? :-p -- Mentisock 12:48, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

Of course we're not an rpg site, the point is that regardless of how the statistics are generated and where they are displayed, they will be important to some users of MediaWiki. It is therefore inappropriate for us on en.wiki, just because we are the most prominent users of MediaWiki, to cause extra work for those other users to suit our own style preferences. We're far and away the biggest kid in the playground; we must be careful not to turn into the school bully. Happy‑melon 16:56, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

Just because you don't care about something doesn't mean that nobody else does either... EVula // talk // ☯ // 18:22, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

You're honestly interested in how many stewards there are on en.wiki? :-p -- Mentisock 19:52, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

No, because I know how many local stewards there are without looking. However, I also realize that it's just a "grab every usergroup and spit out the number of people in each" type of page. The number of users, oversighters, articles, et al? Yes, that is interesting. EVula // talk // ☯ // 22:00, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

Certainly. I'm just saying that the special page could be tidied up more. -- Mentisock 09:57, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Categories disappearing

If I edit a page of a certain length that has a {{reflist}} in it, that edit makes the categories disappear, even though the coding for the categories is still there. Any idea what is causing this? It just happened to me on Walden Galleria. Ten Pound Hammer and his otters • ^{(Broken clamshells • Otter chirps • HELP)} 03:36, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

I'm not seeing that when I look through the diffs; all categories are still visible at the bottom of each diff. Nor do I see the problem when I look at prior revisions of the page. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 14:50, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

Show us a diff. A reference tag might not have been closed, so everything after that was placed in the reference. Gary King (talk) 19:04, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

moving sandbox header to Mediawiki namespace

Is this possible? It seems like more of an elegant solution than having the template in the sandbox for newbies to mistakenly delete and/or mess with every few hours.--Aervanath lives in the Orphanage 06:03, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

Not allowing people to edit stuff in the sandbox sort of defeats the entire purpose of having a sandbox... besides, it isn't part of the site interface; we could just make it a template and fully-protect it if we wanted to prevent it from being edited. EVula // talk // ☯ // 18:19, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

I guess the post is about preventing users from messing with Template:Please leave this line alone (sandbox heading) on Wikipedia:Sandbox. The template page is protected so it cannot be changed by non-administrators, but they can remove it from the sandbox (and often do). As far as I know, the software currently gives no good way to avoid that. It would be possible to let Wikipedia:Sandbox be protected and transclude an editable sandbox but I don't think that would be good. A bot periodically restores the header [2] if it has been removed and continuing with that seems better to me. PrimeHunter (talk) 19:50, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps the OP was suggesting we should have an editnotice for the sandbox? If so, we already have one. Algebraist 22:07, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

See what Gurch said. The idea is to get the header we currently use out of the edit window with it still on the page, with edits appearing below it, or onto the edit page replacing that editnotice. Comment here also. Clark89 (talk) 23:48, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

Shutting down a noncompliant mirror which uses ReflectionScript

A noncomplianat mirror refuses to respond to any emails, and has ignored a DMTF takedown notice. I notified Jimbo, who directed me to Mike Godwin. He, in turn, suggested that we shut them down technically. It appears that they use ReflectionScript, although I don't know how to stop them from accessing Wikipedia with it. It was suggested that I begin a Village Pump discussion, so I have. Dendodge Talk^Contribs 16:13, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

Do you mean a DTMF take-down notice? BEEP BEEP BEEEP! — Werdna • talk 02:19, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, whatever - I sent one. Dendodge Talk^Contribs 17:01, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

I would think, as a starting point, we should find out bugs in the script and then do someone to the Wikipedia interface to make the mirror break. Does anyone know how this could be done? I think the devs added the +\ to edittokens to break crappy proxies, can we find something that will have the same effect on ReflectionScript? Foxy Loxy ^Pounce! 02:29, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

\+ was added to break crappy proxies which broke our page text. This is different because it's not causing direct damage to Wikipedia, and blocking can be done much more easily by IP address. — Werdna • talk 23:34, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

Adding a colour icon to the toolbar.

I would like to add a button to the toolbar.: ie. the toolbar when you edit a page. (see images bellow)

.........

This button would open up (like a flash button) and allow you to chose what colour of text you would like to insert. How can I add this for just my account? monobook.js perhaps? What if we wanted to do this for everyone's account? --CyclePat (talk) 17:12, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

Considering that we don't really use colored text anywhere in the encyclopedia itself (and most all those tools are for editing the encyclopedia), I don't think there will ever be a button for color. Kinda glad about that; I don't want Wikipedia talk pages to devolve into the average web forum with random colors everywhere... EVula // talk // ☯ // 18:13, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

Definitely not; anything that can't be emphasised enough with regular text, italics and bold, doesn't deserve to be heard. Of course no one can stop you adding it to your own edit toolbar, but be aware that many people will not particularly appreciate you using it extensively. Happy‑melon 18:20, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

I can't think of any use for font colors in an article, but I use them to highlight content reviews and similar discussions. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 19:29, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

Found-out how to add it to my own toolbar. In fact here's an image of the button (ie.:) (See my discussion about buttons for more details). Best regards. Thank you for your concerns regarding the unrelated and "un-written" wikipedia rules on users preferences or in this case, lack thereof interest, for coloured text or maybe even Big, bold, italic and/or UPPER CASE text.(sarcastically) --CyclePat (talk) 19:05, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

Ibox template help please...

Resolved

 – template fixed by User:Algebraist - thank you -  – ukexpat (talk) 19:21, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

Folks, I need the assistance of someone who knows more about template coding than I do (which means pretty much anyone). At the moment {{Infobox Rowing Club}} does not appear to contain the appropriate coding to enable a resized display of the club's emblem image. When I tried to add the club's emblem to the ibox I added to Agecroft Rowing Club, it was scaled up way too large causing jaggies and other distortion. Would someone please take a look at the template and suggest/implement the appropriate coding? Thanks.  – ukexpat (talk) 17:14, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

I've added a parameter called Emblemsize which, when defined, overrides the default 200px. Algebraist 18:56, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

Thank you that's perfect! – ukexpat (talk) 19:18, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

Please help me with my signature

Resolved

I am currently trying to customise my signature but am encountering technical difficulties. I want my signature to look like this:

It Is Me Here ^{t / c}

... but when I paste the relevant code - '''[[User:It Is Me Here|<span style="color:#006600;">It Is Me Here</span>]]''' <sup>'''[[User_talk:It Is Me Here|<span style="color:#CC6600;">t</span>]] / [[Special:Contributions/It Is Me Here|<span style="color:#CC6600;">c</span>]]</sup> - into the box in my Preferences page, and then type ~~~~ on a page, it renders it in the following way:

<span style="font-family:Arial">'''[[User:It Is Me Here|<span style="color:#006600;">It Is Me Here</span>]]''' <sup>'''[[User_talk:It Is Me Here|<span style="color:#CC6600;">t</span>]] / [[Special:Contributions/It Is Me Here|<span style="color:#CC6600;" (talk)

Please help! It Is Me Here (talk) 20:30, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

Edit: it turns out that I had needed to tick the "raw signatures" box and close a few tags. It Is Me Here ^{t / c} 20:34, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

Help with template error

I'm trying to create a new template for referencing, but am getting the error Expression error: Unrecognised punctuation character "{"

Current source:

{{#ifexpr: {{{1}}}>0|[http://www.tki.org.nz/e/schools/display_school_info.php?school_id={{{1}}} Te Kete Ipurangi schools database: {{{2}}}]|[http://www.tki.org.nz/e/schools/index.php Te Kete Ipurangi schools database]}}<noinclude>{{Documentation}}[[Category:New Zealand specific source templates|TKI]]</noinclude>

What have I done wrong? An alternative logic would be to force the use of parameter 1 by displaying a nice red error message if it is missing. dramatic (talk) 21:49, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

That source should work fine as long as the parameter 1 is defined. If 1 is not defined, it'll break. If the purpose of the #ifexpr is to check whether or not 1 is defined, you should replace it with #if:{{{1|}}}. Algebraist 22:02, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

Yes— it should work properly when used. To keep it from looking ugly on the template page, enclose it in <includeonly>...</includeonly>. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 22:03, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanks - done and documented at {{TKI}} dramatic (talk) 22:28, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

At present, the template will not function as documented: it will return an expression error if {{{1}}} is undefined. As I said, for this purpose, you should use #if. Algebraist 22:32, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

But unlike #ifexpr, {{#if:{{{1|}}}|true|false}} will return "true" for any non-blank parameter, including zero which would have been "false" in the old code, so this might not be what you want. — CharlotteWebb 20:59, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

TOC without numerals

Is there any chance to have TOC without numerals, so just titles of chapters? --Janezdrilc (talk) 21:53, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

Look in Category:TOC templates. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 22:09, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

I am afraid there is no such example. All templates include __NOTOC__ within the codes, but I need toc, only without numerals ahead of titles. I would actually need this in Wikisource. Thanks anyway for helping me. --Janezdrilc (talk) 21:11, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

<div class="nonumtoc">__TOC__</div>, and you'll have to ask the appropriate CSS be copied from the local MediaWiki:Common.css. --Splarka (rant) 08:56, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

Waw, it works perfectly. Now one last thing. Is it possible to write a different word instead of Contetnts, let's say Chapters? That would be even more wonderful. --Janezdrilc (talk) 12:00, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

You'd have to change s:MediaWiki:toc. --Splarka (rant) 12:34, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

Articles

1) Does the article count include redirects? (A redirect might be considered a link.) And, by the way, if you answer this, please tell me how you knew.

2) I read somewhere that all wikipedia articles are numbered. Can I access the list of numbers and then retreive an article using its number? -- User:La la ooh, 20 November —Preceding undated comment was added at 00:59, 21 November 2008 (UTC).

1) As it says on Wikipedia:Size of Wikipedia in the "data set" section, redirects are not counted.

2) Articles are numbered two different ways, one a simple indexing, and the other designed for the "random article" feature. You can't access either of them, and there's not really any use for doing so.

--Carnildo (talk) 03:03, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Actually the value of page_id is public [3] and also available to javascripts as wgArticleId. — CharlotteWebb 20:47, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

Headings

OK, I have no idea what's up with this; whether its just me or everybody. Somehow or other, the tabs (article/discussion/edit this page/history etc) have been replaced by shorter versions (article/talk/edit/history). I'm confident that this is reversible as I when I load a page the originals pop up, and then switch to the shorter version. I preferred it with the extended version; is there a way I can get this back? -- THE DARK LORD TROMBONATOR 03:33, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

THe long versions are there for me... Try purging your cache (Click on the link or press Shift+refresh in Firefox) ManishEarth^{Talk • Stalk} 06:14, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

No change. Would it be something in preferences? I looked but could not find anything. -- THE DARK LORD TROMBONATOR 06:20, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Are you using any gadgets? If so, try disabling them one at a time to find the one doing it (theoretically). Also, whatever you have at User:The dark lord trombonator/monobook.js is just wrong, you should blank that (that is a bit of CSS and importing of a non-existing unprotected page). --Splarka (rant) 08:48, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Did you change your default language setting? I know that the tab labels are different in the British English version. – ukexpat (talk) 16:03, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanks guys, but Splaka takes the cake. It was my gadget version of friendly, which I have since disabled since I never used it. Also thanks for the heads-up about the potential security hazard in that page that passed for a monobook (seriously, I have no idea what was even meant to be happening in there!) -- THE DARK LORD TROMBONATOR 20:58, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Revision history align

Revision history looses alignment after username of the editor, due to length of user name. Some style tag to make sure that (25,910 bytes) (Edit Summary here) come exactly one below another. Revison history page would look far tidier if done so.

Example current:

• (cur) (last) 03:53, 21 November 2008 Raise lkblr (Talk | contribs) (25,910 bytes) (→Ulsoor lake photo) (undo)
• (cur) (last) 22:37, 20 November 2008 Lihaas (Talk | contribs) (25,663 bytes) (→The name-change debate, again) (undo)

Example suggested:

• (cur) (last) 03:53, 21 November 2008 Raise lkblr (Talk | contribs) (25,910 bytes) (→Ulsoor lake photo) (undo)
• (cur) (last) 22:37, 20 November 2008 Lihaas (Talk | contribs) [---] (25,663 bytes) (→The name-change debate, again) (undo)

If that byte info come exactly below one another, notice [---] is blank space in above example so that "bytes" come exactly one below another, the history page will become tidy and more legible. Give your suggestions! Raise lkblr (talk) 04:27, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Span style=minwidth:150px UserName(talk|contribs) /span - Spanning username with minimum width would be one good solution. Raise lkblr (talk) 04:37, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

You can't just give it a minimum width; it'd still break whenever one line was longer than the other. Basically, the entire history layout would have to be converted into a table, something which is much, much grander than what you may have initially thought you were suggesting. :) EVula // talk // ☯ // 04:38, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply, that table would tidy up overflowed edit summaries too. But some user names are too long, this has to be taken into consideration. Raise lkblr (talk) 10:15, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

You could try adding something like this to your monobook.css or other skin-specific CSS file. This seems to work for me in FF3, anyway.

#pagehistory .mw-userlink {
    width:10ex;
    display:inline-block;
    vertical-align:top;
    white-space:nowrap;
    overflow:hidden;
}

"width:10ex" and "display:inline-block" tell the browser to use a specific width box to contain the username, and "vertical-align:top" tells it to align the box with the top of the containing box (the default, baseline, makes it appear superscripted). "white-space:nowrap" tells it to not wrap lines, and "overflow:hidden" tells it to not let the rest of the username flop out of the box. Anomie⚔ 12:50, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

That did not help much. Showing minor edit m after "bytes" would also help tidying. Raise lkblr (talk) 15:36, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

Organizing wachlist?

Is there any way of organizing your watchlist by adding different watch categories, which youi can easily show or hide. For example, if you are patrolling heavily vandalized pages, then you don't want the edits cluttering up your watchlist. I'm looking for a feature which allows you to add watch pages with categories. Is this possible? Thanks, ManishEarth^{Talk • Stalk} 06:08, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

One of the watchlist scripts at Wikipedia:WikiProject User scripts/Scripts#Watchlist may help, or if you use Firefox and Greasemonkey - Wikipedia:Tools/Greasemonkey user scripts#Misc. – ukexpat (talk) 16:01, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Overlap in lead section edit

If you have ticked the box for an edit tab for lead section editing (Special:Preferences > Gadgets > User interface gadgets--The box:"Add an [edit] link for the lead section of a page"), and go to this page: Virus, then thelead section edit link covers the semi-protected padlock link. Could an admin fix the positioning? Thank you, ManishEarth^{Talk • Stalk} 06:21, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

I think thats a screen resolution problem. I don't see an overlap when viewing at 1280x1024. In any event I don't think it's an admin fix, it would have to be a mediawiki software fix or an edit to the default .css. – ukexpat (talk) 15:56, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

GIF scaling problems

Is anyone looking into the GIF scaling problems? Anyone know if/when this will be fixed? It's making quite a few articles look like a dog's dinner, so I'd hate for it to be ignored. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.156.127.116 (talk) 14:24, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

I do concur that scaled GIF images look like crap now. I also see why; the GIFs are no longer scaled(!) All GIF images now have the original image as the source. This can get quite problematic for large images. — Edokter • Talk • 15:20, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

See #GIF resizing. This Bugzilla report may be related.[4] --—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 15:58, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

May I recommend a different web browser? I know Opera does high-quality image resizing. --Carnildo (talk) 23:02, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

You're right, it's partly the fault of IE, which does a really rubbish job of scaling GIFs. However, recommending that people don't use IE to view Wikipedia is not an option. Similarly, the suggestion "for non-animated images, try using PNG" at the discussion linked above is not a satisfactory solution -- unless someone is prepared to go through and convert the thousands of existing GIF images. The thing that puzzles me is why server-side scaling of PNG images still seems to work OK. I gather that GIF scaling was turned off for performance reasons, but I don't understand why PNG scaling should be any less of a load. Matt 12:33, 22 November 2008 (UTC). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.146.47.118 (talk)

Sematic Wikipedia

I am interested in Semantic Wikipedia, but I can't seem to find any concrete information anywhere other than proposal from a few years ago. Are there any discussions about it? Are upper levels of the foundation considering using the Semantic Mediawiki extension in the near future? If not, what are the reservations? Is there some list of things they want to be implemented? Is there anything we can do while waiting, like preparing the ontology lists, writing automation bots etc.? So in short, is there a coordinated effort somewhere in Wikipedia, if not, why not? -- þħɥʂıɕıʄʈ^ʝɘɖı 20:51, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

It's on our list to consider, but we're a bit leery by default -- performance and markup complexity implications need to be considered. We may end up doing something that's a little more limited but still provides many of the neat extras. --brion (talk) 21:07, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

I think extra Semantic MediaWiki markup is simple enough, i can't imagine how simpler it can be. If editors can deal with brackets they can handle those extra semicolons as well. But I certainly understand that there can be performance issues. May be we can start by using their markup but not do any realtime processing, reasoning, search etc. instead export rdf offline. When the performance becomes good enough we can turn on other features as well. -- þħɥʂıɕıʄʈ^ʝɘɖı 03:00, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

Upload File size limit raised

Hey everyone, the file size upload limit has been raised to 100MB by Brion Vibber. See here and here for the mailing list posts. Also, files uploaded are on new file servers now. Techman224^Talk 01:22, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

Good news. Videos are the main file that the limit presents problems for. Not sure about the bandwidth issue, though I guess people will still watch them even if they are split into five parts. Richard001 (talk) 06:21, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

Interwiki links - the default code is not a good option

At Commons I link to en.wikipedia all the time. To do so you simply type 'w:' at the beginning of the link and then just leave the rest as normal, e.g. w:Wikipedia (this works here too, though it's not necessary of course). Unfortunately, and as you can see, this is displayed as "w:Wikipedia" and not simply "Wikipedia". It's almost never the case that you actually want it to say 'w:whatever', but this remains the default. To display it normally you have to type 'w:word|word', which wastes at least a second and adds frustration every time you have to do that. Surely the preferable default would be just be showing the text after the prefix and letting people type in '|w:word' if they actually want that to be shown. Surely it would be a simple matter to change this?

The problem is that this code is so widely used. Anything that people did want to read 'prefix:word' would become 'word' anyway (perhaps they said 'type in the following code', taking advantage of the fact that you can see the prefix code by default. Is there any way we can get around this? The only thing I can think of is to create a new prefix which does the same thing, e.g. wx:Word would work the same as w:word, but would default to 'word' and not 'w:word'. The same could be used for all other prefixes, i.e. just add an x on the end to the existing ones (I know from another wiki that adding new prefixes to other wikis is a fairly simple matter). So wikt:word would become wiktx:word, and you wouldn't have to type out/copy + paste '|word' every time you used it. I'm sure I'm not the only person who has become a bit frustrated with this technicality. I suppose I should propose such a change at Bugzilla. Would anyone support it? And, as I have assumed, is it actually possible for the software to ignore the prefix by default? Richard001 (talk) 06:18, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

WP:PIPETRICK - If you just type [[w:Foo|]], its automatically expanded to [[w:Foo|Foo]] when you save the page. Mr.Z-man 06:26, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

page view stats

Hi, I know about this page for getting page view data for a single page on Wikipedia. Is this the best way to do so (besides working with the raw data from Domas?) Are there any other similar tools? Thanks! -- phoebe / (talk to me) 07:35, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

Actually, I've been assigned to work on a special page for checking page-view stats right on-wiki. I've got a prototype running at home, but it only works for 14 articles and isn't public :-). — Werdna • talk 07:38, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

Please help me with .CSS / .JS message blockers

I am somewhat at a loss regarding message blockers on Wikipedia. When I log out, every page's History tab has a series of links which are called things like "Revision history statistics" and "Page view statistics". However, when logged in, that line disappears for me and line below it changes to read "Legend: (cur) = difference with current version, (last) = difference with preceding version, M = minor edit". I have tried removing other message blockers on my .CSS and although they have worked (the GFDL messages came back, for instance), nothing I did seemed to make the new line in page histories appear for me. Is there anything else sitting in my .CSS or .JS that is blocking that line? Is there some code I could add to either page to force those links to appear?

Also, is there a line of code I could add to my .CSS to block the "WARNING: This page is 154 kilobytes long; some browsers may have problems editing pages approaching or longer than 32kb. Please consider breaking the page into smaller sections" line?

Thanks in advance. It Is Me Here ^{t / c} 10:06, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

For the latter:

#mw-edit-longpagewarning {
display:none;
}

You have a lot of javascript, and possibly have gadgets selected that we can't see. Try disabling javascript in your browser to quickly see if it is causing that. If so, then try disabling any gadgets you have, and your monobook.js scripts. The long page warning is #longpagewarning. --Splarka (rant) 11:05, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, the Longpagewarning blocker worked but I need more information regarding history page links. Namely, how do I disable Javascript in my browser? It Is Me Here ^{t / c} 11:41, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

Page editing issues

Directly editing a page through the edit button nearly duplicates the page. This is particularly troublesome and annoying for long pages. Anyone knows why do this happens and how to fix it? Alexius08 (talk) 11:32, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

Which edit button are you referring to and what do you mean by nearly duplicates the page? PrimeHunter (talk) 02:08, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

Discussion to talk

A couple days ago the tabs at the top of each page that normally read 'discussion' and 'new section' now read 'talk' an '+', respectively. I don't recall changing any preferences (and the preference that reads "change the 'new section' tab text to instead display the much narrower '+'," remains unchecked). Did this happen to anyone else, and does anyone know who why? Thanks, αЯβιτЯαЯιŁΨθ ^(talk) 14:11, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

Also, 'edit this page' has become 'edit'. αЯβιτЯαЯιŁΨθ ^(talk) 15:24, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

I also have that problem. I have no idea of what happened, since I don't know the MediaWiki messages that got edited. Alexius08 (talk) 16:31, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

Apparently, it's Friendly - it can be disabled. Dendodge Talk^Contribs 21:00, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

Problem displaying formula

Sometimes some formulas don't display. Not permanently. See <math>\sum_{i=1}^{\infty}{1 \over i^2}</math> $\sum _{i=1}^{\infty }{1 \over i^{2}}$ and <math>(1-\frac{2}{n})\times 180</math> $(1-{\frac {2}{n}})\times 180$. What can be done? Bean49 (talk) 19:19, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

I have noticed this problem on a lot of pages too. From time to time, this happens (I don't remember the reason), but usually it only lasts a few hours. This has been going on for days, and well-intentioned (but new and confused) editors are trying to make all kinds of futile edits to fix it when the formulas in an article don't display. I for one would like to know if there is any effort being made to fix the problem. Is a server down or something? siℓℓy rabbit (talk) 19:25, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

Until this is fixed, note that you can fix any given formula by changing it in any way, such as adding superfluous braces: <math>\sum_{i=1}^{\infty}{1 \over i^2}{}</math> $\sum _{i=1}^{\infty }{1 \over i^{2}}{}$ and <math>(1-\frac{2}{n})\times 180{}</math> $(1-{\frac {2}{n}})\times 180{}$. Algebraist 19:32, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

The D: Prefix

There is an article titled 'd:tour 1997 live at Southampton' (an album) which has recently become unreachable due to the nature of the d: prefix, which now links the page straight to wiktionary, where the page is obviously absent. Is there any way that this could be resolved? Possibly by changing the title to 'd tour' or 'd-tour'. Whilst it would be slightly incorrect, at least it would allow the page to be accessed. —Preceding unsigned comment added by JALEXANDER06 (talk • contribs) 20:54, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

Need to ask the devs to move it: Template:Bug Happy‑melon 22:05, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

Aww shucks I was hoping to see what Brion had hidden on his D:\ drive. Seriously though false positives will be inevitable when using single-letter prefixes. — CharlotteWebb 22:12, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

cite causes only half of text to show

Resolved

 – ukexpat (talk) 22:28, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

On Right- and left-hand traffic (and other pages too) (in Classic skin on MSIE on XP) the hidden "show boxes" titles ...generally keeping to the right (left) have a reference in the title. Because the reference is superscripted, the net effect is that the body text is pushed down the page, however the line height is not matchingly increased, so the bottom half of the title text is cropped making it ugly and hard to read. (a) is this just classic skin (b) is this just MSIE (c) is it fixable - and if so how? -- SGBailey (talk) 21:32, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

Looks OK in monobook/Firefox. I will edit the page to move the ref within the box. – ukexpat (talk) 22:14, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

 Done How does it look now? – ukexpat (talk) 22:17, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

Lovely. Thanks. -- SGBailey (talk) 22:26, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

Are combined watchlists possible?

Hi all -

I regularly contribute to en:Wiki, and am also an occasional contributor to commons and to a couple of other language Wikipedias. Unfortunately, I'm only on those other WPs and Commons once every couple of weeks or so... is there any way of adding the few items I have on my watchlist on those projects to my watchlist at en:Wiki? Grutness...wha? 00:00, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

No, not yet. However you can set up MediaWiki to email you when something is changed on your watchlist, on some of the smaller projects, including Commons. It's in the preferences with the other email options. Graham87 04:20, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

Right now if you are logged in you can use something like:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=query&list=watchlist&wllimit=50

to check your local watchlist, but as far as I know the only way to get the same data for another wiki is to change the domain name in the url (I don't see any way to set a "site" parameter to access it from the local API):

http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/api.php?action=query&list=watchlist&wllimit=50

Cross-site AJAX which tries to get data from the API of another domain (that is, to import data from sites other than where the script is run) will fail in most browsers unless the security settings can somehow be over-ridden. (edit: this may or may not be configurable in the yet unreleased Firefox 3.1, I'd have to read further)

For slightly related reasons this wouldn't work on the toolserver either unless they make an SUL login for it. Unlike the API the toolserver has no way to know which wiki user you are. If a toolserver script did try to check for the cookies set by sites this would also be denied by the security settings of most browsers. Obviously showing your watchlist without confirming identity would make watchlist data visible to everyone and be totally unacceptable (and arguably in violation of the foundation policy on "non-public data").

This might be a good feature for a mediawiki-specific client application—something akin to AWB, Huggle, or any (other?) bot software. — CharlotteWebb 20:04, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

Yeah. Normally, you could use a JavaScript callback for JSON data, like this...

http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/api.php?action=query&list=watchlist&wllimit=50&format=jsonfm&callback=callme

However, any request with the "callback" parameter fake-logs-you-out before querying for the information (for security reasons), so checking one's watchlist in this way is effectively useless. As you mention, making it useful would create a bit of a security hole :/ Gracenotes^T § 23:42, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

A toolserver tool that implements combined watchlists could use TUSC to confirm the users' identity. Graham87 23:38, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

I don't believe the watchlist table is available to toolserver tools/users, for obvious privacy reasons. The only way for such a tool to work would be to log in as you on every project, which would require your wiki password, so it would violate toolserver rules. Short of doing cross-site AJAX, creating a tool entirely, or mostly, separate from the web browser, or a change to the software to add cross-site watchlists, the only way to do this is with the RSS feeds and an aggregator. Mr.Z-man 00:39, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

This'd be easy (with a user subpage of links on each project) if there was a method for Recentchangeslinked in the API (per bugzilla:14869). --Splarka (rant) 08:27, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

Spacing not working in Tex

Why is it that a variable with spacing such as $\ f\$ does not work with some letters such as $\ k\$. I am seeing the "f" rendered in png but the "k" is rendered in html and the code for the spaces is also showing. I noticed this problem at Wikipedia:WikiProject Electronics/Standard symbols but there may be other things broken as well. SpinningSpark 09:29, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

I just tried this in IE6 to see if it is a browser problem as I have started using Firefox relatively recently. IE is just rendering a blank space for the k. SpinningSpark 09:34, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

This seems to be the TeX-is-broken bug again. This instance seems to have been fixed. Algebraist 12:51, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

That looks good to me too now. What was that all about? SpinningSpark 16:31, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

Bugzilla:16440. Algebraist 16:46, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

"page" tabs

Hi, every time I load a page, the "page" bit of the tabs ("project page", "user page", "talk page", "special page") blinks away almost instantly, like there's a java-thing supressing it. Does anyone know how I can get it back, I like it? Thanks! ╟─TreasuryTag►contribs─╢ 12:26, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

Winter

The article about the season, Winter, is not loading correctly and the tabs (discussion, edit, history) and the entire left side of the page have vanished. Could be a problem on my end but other pages are loading correctly. 144.92.84.206 (talk) 16:56, 24 November 2008 (UTC)